Marketers’ perception of the implementation of social media marketing: Evidence from large Finnish companies’ marketing campaigns

Social media is a multidimensional marketing and communications channel which can support and enhance a business’ reputation, sales and even longevity. Social media as a business tool encourages an interaction between customers and companies which gives opportunities for a company to better understand their customers, to target them more effectively and to collaborate and create dialogues with them which is not possible through traditional media channels. The aim of a social media strategy is to increase brand awareness, image, loyalty and recognition. The peer networks that social media creates allows a company to disseminate information through loyal customers to new and prospective customers to ultimately increase reach. The purpose of the study is to understand the marketer’s perspective of social media marketing use and how it is currently utilized in marketing and communications activities in Finland. Three companies were interviewed covering fourteen different implementations of social media marketing campaigns. These were then analysed to ascertain the utilization methods and experience gained on recent campaigns in the Finnish market The utilization of social media marketing was analysed using the methods of thematic analysis and inductive and abductive reasoning. Elements and themes were drawn out of the separate interviews to create a framework with which to explore, evaluate and match theories that define social media usage by companies. It became clear from all of the interviews that social media as a tool is most effective when it captures the viewer’s interest through rich and entertaining content. This directed the theoretical research towards Engagement Theory and Content Marketing which look to emphasize the importance of communities, collaboration, interaction, and peer-sharing as the key drivers of a social media marketing campaign.

A global transport packaging guideline for selected business areas

In this Master’s Thesis a global transport packaging guideline for selected business areas was compiled for the Fiskars the company, which provides branded consumer goods for home, garden and outdoor use. The business areas included were Home and Garden business areas. The aim of the guideline was to be a comprehensive guide for the suppliers, product development, operations and external vendors of the company. The guideline consists of written instructions, tables and illustrations that provide useful information for players working with transport packages from sourcing through to shipments. As the role of corporate responsibility and sustainability has grown, a part of responsible manufacturing strategy includes using materials that are re-usable, recyclable or recoverable as energy or through composting. Hence packaging waste management implementations of different regions were also inspected. The resulting guide covers a range of topics concerning packaging and its transport. The topics include legal requirements, restricted materials and substances, preferred materials, markings, labeling of boxes, logistics and distribution center requirements, physical testing and an inspection checklist.

Adaptive Routing Approaches for Networked Many-Core Systems

Through advances in technology, System-on-Chip design is moving towards integrating tens to hundreds of intellectual property blocks into a single chip. In such a many-core system, on-chip communication becomes a performance bottleneck for high performance designs. Network-on-Chip (NoC) has emerged as a viable solution for the communication challenges in highly complex chips. The NoC architecture paradigm, based on a modular packet-switched mechanism, can address many of the on-chip communication challenges such as wiring complexity, communication latency, and bandwidth. Furthermore, the combined benefits of 3D IC and NoC schemes provide the possibility of designing a high performance system in a limited chip area. The major advantages of 3D NoCs are the considerable reductions in average latency and power consumption. There are several factors degrading the performance of NoCs. In this thesis, we investigate three main performance-limiting factors: network congestion, faults, and the lack of efficient multicast support. We address these issues by the means of routing algorithms. Congestion of data packets may lead to increased network latency and power consumption. Thus, we propose three different approaches for alleviating such congestion in the network. The first approach is based on measuring the congestion information in different regions of the network, distributing the information over the network, and utilizing this information when making a routing decision. The second approach employs a learning method to dynamically find the less congested routes according to the underlying traffic. The third approach is based on a fuzzy-logic technique to perform better routing decisions when traffic information of different routes is available. Faults affect performance significantly, as then packets should take longer paths in order to be routed around the faults, which in turn increases congestion around the faulty regions. We propose four methods to tolerate faults at the link and switch level by using only the shortest paths as long as such path exists. The unique characteristic among these methods is the toleration of faults while also maintaining the performance of NoCs. To the best of our knowledge, these algorithms are the first approaches to bypassing faults prior to reaching them while avoiding unnecessary misrouting of packets. Current implementations of multicast communication result in a significant performance loss for unicast traffic. This is due to the fact that the routing rules of multicast packets limit the adaptivity of unicast packets. We present an approach in which both unicast and multicast packets can be efficiently routed within the network. While suggesting a more efficient multicast support, the proposed approach does not affect the performance of unicast routing at all. In addition, in order to reduce the overall path length of multicast packets, we present several partitioning methods along with their analytical models for latency measurement. This approach is discussed in the context of 3D mesh networks.

An alternative finite element formulation for determination of streamlines in two-dimensional problems

It is well known that the numerical solutions of incompressible viscous flows are of great importance in Fluid Dynamics. The graphics output capabilities of their computational codes have revolutionized the communication of ideas to the non-specialist public. In general those codes include, in their hydrodynamic features, the visualization of flow streamlines - essentially a form of contour plot showing the line patterns of the flow - and the magnitudes and orientations of their velocity vectors. However, the standard finite element formulation to compute streamlines suffers from the disadvantage of requiring the determination of boundary integrals, leading to cumbersome implementations at the construction of the finite element code. In this article, we introduce an efficient way - via an alternative variational formulation - to determine the streamlines for fluid flows, which does not need the computation of contour integrals. In order to illustrate the good performance of the alternative formulation proposed, we capture the streamlines of three viscous models: Stokes, Navier-Stokes and Viscoelastic flows.

Maintaining supply performance during an ERP system implementation phase : case Cloetta Suomi Oy

Implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system often means a major change to an organization and involves significant risks. It is typical that many of the ERP system implementations fail resulting in tremendous damage to the business. Moreover, running normal business operations during an ERP system implementation is far more complicated than normally. This thesis focuses on how an organization should manage the ERP system implementation process in order to maintain supply performance during the implementation phase. The theoretical framework in this thesis focuses on ERP system implementations with a critical success factor approach. Critical success factors can be divided into strategic and tactical level success factors. By considering these critical success factors, ERP system implementation project’s timeline and best practices of an ERP implementation, a critical success factor based ERP system implementation management framework is presented. The framework can be used as a theoretical framework when the goal is to avoid ERP system implementation phase issues that are driven by the ERP system implementation project and that may decrease organization’s supply performance. This thesis is a case study that was written on an assignment to a confectionary company Cloetta Suomi Oy. In order to collect data, interviews of the case company personnel were conducted. In addition, several other data collection methods were used throughout the research process. These data collection methods include examination of presentations and archival records as well as direct observations in case company meetings and in various work duties. The results of this thesis indicate that there are several factors that may decrease organization’s supply performance during the ERP system implementation. These issues are categorized under external and internal issues and further into six risk drivers that are suppliers, customers, products, staff, information systems and other projects. After the description and categorization of each issue, the thesis focuses on finding solutions on how to avoid or mitigate the impact of these issues on the organization’s supply performance. This examination leads to several operational activities that are also practical to business practitioners. It is also stated that a successful ERP system implementation that also causes minimal disturbance to organization’s supply performance during the ERP system implementation, is achieved by considering three levels of actions.

Jätehuollon tilannekuva puolustushallinnossa

Diplomityön tavoitteena oli tuottaa jätehuollon tilannekuva Suomen puolustushallinnolle. Diplomityön ensisijaiseksi tutkimustavoitteeksi määriteltiin jätehuollon nykytilan kartoitus vuonna 2013. Lisäksi diplomityössä tarkasteltiin jätehuollon suunnittelutyön merkitystä puolustushallinnolle sekä kartoitettiin lähitulevaisuuden painopistealueita puolustushallinnon jätehuollossa. Sisätilojen jätehuoltojärjestelyt eivät noudata samaa linjaa ulkojätepisteiden jäte-huoltojärjestelyjen kanssa. Tämä asettaa haasteita syntypaikkalajittelun toteuttamiselle ja edelleen jätehuoltotavoitteiden saavuttamiselle. Tähän jätehuollon epäkohtaan on mahdollista vaikuttaa jätehuollon prosessien selkeyttämisellä ja sopimusten tarkastelemisella yhdessä vuonna 2015 käynnistyvän puolustusvoimien Logistiikkalaitoksen kanssa. Laskennallisen vaikuttavuusanalyysin perusteella jätehuollon tehostamistoimilla on mahdollista saavuttaa myös kustannussäästöjä. Ulkojätepisteiden tehostamisella olisi mahdollista saavuttaa noin 25 % säästöt jätehuollon kustannuksissa. Tehokkaammalla syntypaikkalajittelulla olisi mahdollista saavuttaa noin 27–31 % säästöt jätteen käsittelymaksuissa. Jätehuoltotavoitteiden saavuttamisessa keskeinen rooli on myös jätehuollon tiedonhallinnalla ja raportoinnilla sekä jätehuollon käyttäjät tavoittavalla tiedotuksella. Jätehuollon suunnittelu- ja kehittämistyössä tulee pyrkiä käyttäjäläheisempään toteutukseen. Diplomityön pohjalta aloitetaan puolustushallinnon jätehuollon pitkän aikavälin toiminnallisen strategian suunnittelu. Pitkän aikavälin toiminnalliseen strategiaan sisällytetään uudet jätehuollon tavoitteet, joissa huomioidaan puolustushallinnon sisäisten tavoitteiden lisäksi myös valtakunnallinen jätesuunnittelu.

Fuzzy ontology for knowledge mobilisation and decision support

A growing concern for organisations is how they should deal with increasing amounts of collected data. With fierce competition and smaller margins, organisations that are able to fully realize the potential in the data they collect can gain an advantage over the competitors. It is almost impossible to avoid imprecision when processing large amounts of data. Still, many of the available information systems are not capable of handling imprecise data, even though it can offer various advantages. Expert knowledge stored as linguistic expressions is a good example of imprecise but valuable data, i.e. data that is hard to exactly pinpoint to a definitive value. There is an obvious concern among organisations on how this problem should be handled; finding new methods for processing and storing imprecise data are therefore a key issue. Additionally, it is equally important to show that tacit knowledge and imprecise data can be used with success, which encourages organisations to analyse their imprecise data. The objective of the research conducted was therefore to explore how fuzzy ontologies could facilitate the exploitation and mobilisation of tacit knowledge and imprecise data in organisational and operational decision making processes. The thesis introduces both practical and theoretical advances on how fuzzy logic, ontologies (fuzzy ontologies) and OWA operators can be utilized for different decision making problems. It is demonstrated how a fuzzy ontology can model tacit knowledge which was collected from wine connoisseurs. The approach can be generalised and applied also to other practically important problems, such as intrusion detection. Additionally, a fuzzy ontology is applied in a novel consensus model for group decision making. By combining the fuzzy ontology with Semantic Web affiliated techniques novel applications have been designed. These applications show how the mobilisation of knowledge can successfully utilize also imprecise data. An important part of decision making processes is undeniably aggregation, which in combination with a fuzzy ontology provides a promising basis for demonstrating the benefits that one can retrieve from handling imprecise data. The new aggregation operators defined in the thesis often provide new possibilities to handle imprecision and expert opinions. This is demonstrated through both theoretical examples and practical implementations. This thesis shows the benefits of utilizing all the available data one possess, including imprecise data. By combining the concept of fuzzy ontology with the Semantic Web movement, it aspires to show the corporate world and industry the benefits of embracing fuzzy ontologies and imprecision.

Design and validation of stateful composite RESTful web services

A web service is a software system that provides a machine-processable interface to the other machines over the network using different Internet protocols. They are being increasingly used in the industry in order to automate different tasks and offer services to a wider audience. The REST architectural style aims at producing scalable and extensible web services using technologies that play well with the existing tools and infrastructure of the web. It provides a uniform set of operation that can be used to invoke a CRUD interface (create, retrieve, update and delete) of a web service. The stateless behavior of the service interface requires that every request to a resource is independent of the previous ones facilitating scalability. Automated systems, e.g., hotel reservation systems, provide advanced scenarios for stateful services that require a certain sequence of requests that must be followed in order to fulfill the service goals. Designing and developing such services for advanced scenarios with REST constraints require rigorous approaches that are capable of creating web services that can be trusted for their behavior. Systems that can be trusted for their behavior can be termed as dependable systems. This thesis presents an integrated design, analysis and validation approach that facilitates the service developer to create dependable and stateful REST web services. The main contribution of this thesis is that we provide a novel model-driven methodology to design behavioral REST web service interfaces and their compositions. The behavioral interfaces provide information on what methods can be invoked on a service and the pre- and post-conditions of these methods. The methodology uses Unified Modeling Language (UML), as the modeling language, which has a wide user base and has mature tools that are continuously evolving. We have used UML class diagram and UML state machine diagram with additional design constraints to provide resource and behavioral models, respectively, for designing REST web service interfaces. These service design models serve as a specification document and the information presented in them have manifold applications. The service design models also contain information about the time and domain requirements of the service that can help in requirement traceability which is an important part of our approach. Requirement traceability helps in capturing faults in the design models and other elements of software development environment by tracing back and forth the unfulfilled requirements of the service. The information about service actors is also included in the design models which is required for authenticating the service requests by authorized actors since not all types of users have access to all the resources. In addition, following our design approach, the service developer can ensure that the designed web service interfaces will be REST compliant. The second contribution of this thesis is consistency analysis of the behavioral REST interfaces. To overcome the inconsistency problem and design errors in our service models, we have used semantic technologies. The REST interfaces are represented in web ontology language, OWL2, that can be part of the semantic web. These interfaces are used with OWL 2 reasoners to check unsatisfiable concepts which result in implementations that fail. This work is fully automated thanks to the implemented translation tool and the existing OWL 2 reasoners. The third contribution of this thesis is the verification and validation of REST web services. We have used model checking techniques with UPPAAL model checker for this purpose. The timed automata of UML based service design models are generated with our transformation tool that are verified for their basic characteristics like deadlock freedom, liveness, reachability and safety. The implementation of a web service is tested using a black-box testing approach. Test cases are generated from the UPPAAL timed automata and using the online testing tool, UPPAAL TRON, the service implementation is validated at runtime against its specifications. Requirement traceability is also addressed in our validation approach with which we can see what service goals are met and trace back the unfulfilled service goals to detect the faults in the design models. A final contribution of the thesis is an implementation of behavioral REST interfaces and service monitors from the service design models. The partial code generation tool creates code skeletons of REST web services with method pre and post-conditions. The preconditions of methods constrain the user to invoke the stateful REST service under the right conditions and the post condition constraint the service developer to implement the right functionality. The details of the methods can be manually inserted by the developer as required. We do not target complete automation because we focus only on the interface aspects of the web service. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated with a pedagogical example of a hotel room booking service and a relatively complex worked example of holiday booking service taken from the industrial context. The former example presents a simple explanation of the approach and the later worked example shows how stateful and timed web services offering complex scenarios and involving other web services can be constructed using our approach.

Islandora Archipelago: Update on the Project & Community

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Nurses’ Acceptance of an Internet-Based Support System in The Care of Adolescents with Depression

The overall goal of the study was to describe nurses’ acceptance of an Internet-based support system in the care of adolescents with depression. The data were collected in four phases during the period 2006 – 2010 from nurses working in adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinics and from professionals working with adolescents in basic public services. In the first phase, the nurses’ anticipated perceptions of the usefulness of the Internet-based support system before its implementation was explored. In the second phase, the nurses’ perceived ease of computer and Internet use and attitudes toward it were explored. In the third phase, the features of the support system and its implementation process were described. In the fourth phase, the nurses’ experiences of behavioural intention and actual system use of the Internet-based support were described in psychiatric out-patient care after one year use. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to structure the various research phases. Several benefits were identified from the nurses’ perspective in using the Internet-based support system in the care of adolescents with depression. The nurses’ technology skills were good and their attitudes towards computer use were positive. The support system was developed in various phases to meet the adolescents’ needs. Before the implementation of the information technology (IT)-based support system, it is important to pay attention to the nurses’ IT-training, technology support, resources, and safety as well as ethical issues related to the support system. After one year of using the system, the nurses perceived the Internet-based support system to be useful in the care of adolescents with depression. The adolescents’ independent work with the support system at home and the program’s systematic character were experienced as conducive from the point of view of the treatment. However, the Internet-based support system was integrated only partly into the nurseadolescent interaction even though the nurses’ perceptions of it were positive. The use of the IT-based system as part of the adolescents’ depression care was seen positively and its benefits were recognized. This serves as a good basis for future IT-based techniques. Successful implementations of IT-based support systems need a systematic implementation plan and commitment from the part of the organization and its managers. Supporting and evaluating the implementation of an IT-based system should pay attention to changing the nurses’ work styles. Health care organizations should be offered more flexible opportunities to utilize IT-based systems in direct patient care in the future.

Collaborative Customer Relationship Management in Business-to-Business Firm's Strategy

The objective of this thesis is to study the presence of collaborative customer relationship management in a firm’s strategy. In addition the thesis explains specific implementations of collaborative CRM, and CRM in general, by each case company. The sample consists of five Finnish business-to-business companies through applying multiple-case study method. The data is collected through face-to-face interviews with employees knowledgeable of the case company’s CRM processes. The qualitative data is analyzed through coding and shows that two out of five case companies have adopted and are using collaborative CRM in their strategy and operations. These case companies see collaborative CRM as an important driver for the company, through customer focus and market orientation. The rest of the case companies are either in the process of moving towards collaborative CRM or have given little consideration to it. The results show that collaborative CRM is in use, and that each company modifies it to meet their exact aspirations. The major challenge in the process is to fully grasp the importance of a shared vision that can translate into collaborative efforts in CRM and business strategy.

RFID-teknologia kulunvalvonnassa

Tämä kandidaatintutkielma on kirjallisuuskatsaus, joka käsittelee RFID-teknologian hyöndyntämistä kulunvalvonnassa. Työssä perehdytään pintapuolisesti itse teknologiaan, ja luodaan katsaus kulunvalvontaan. Työn pääaihe on kuitenkin kulunvalvonnan ja RFID:n yhdistyminen: miten RFID:tä hyödynnetään kulunvalvonnan toteutuksissa ympäri maailmaa. Työssä tarkastellaan RFID:n vahvuuksia, sekä heikkouksia kulunvalvonnan suhteen. Tämän lisäksi pyritään luomaan kuva nykyisistä ja tulevista implementaatioista. Viimeinen tärkeä työn osa-alue on turvallisuus. RFID:tä käytetään korkeankin turvatason kulunvalvontaratkaisuissa ja tällöin turvallisuuden maksimoiminen on ensiarvoisen tärkeää.

ERP-järjestelmän käyttöönoton vaikutuksia johdon laskentatoimeen: näkökulmia suomalaisista yrityksistä

The objective of this study is to examine effects of ERP-system implementations to management accounting in Finnish companies. Study also explores if ERP-system implementation has influenced to development of management accounting role in companies. Theory part of study examines ERP-system projects and ERP-systems influence to management accounting development. Research is qualitative and empirical material has been collected by interviews from three companies and they ERP-system vendor. According to results ERP-system implementation has affected positively to companies management accounting in many different ways and also influenced to development of management accounting role in companies.

Ikkuna virtuaaliympäristöön

Tämän kandidaatintutkielman tavoitteena on rakentaa käyttäjien laitteiden sijaintia monitoroiva järjestelmä luokkahuonetilaan. Sijaintitiedot siirretään visualisointiohjelmistoon, joka näyttää laitteet virtuaaliympäristössä. Työssä käydään läpi jo olemassa olevat toteutukset ja käydään lävitse käytettyjen työkalujen valintaperusteet. Työn toteutus kuvataan suunnittelusta toteutukseen. Työssä tehdään 3 erillistä testiä, joista saaduilla tuloksia käytetään tutkimusongelmien ratkaisussa.

Tietokonepelien tekoälyn rajat

Tutkimuksessa selvitettiin, kuinka hyvä tekoäly tietokonepeliin on mahdollista toteuttaa nykytiedolla ja -tekniikalla. Tekoäly rajattiin tarkoittamaan tekoälyn ohjaamia pelihahmoja. Lisäksi yksinkertaisia tekoälytoteutuksia ei huomioitu. Työ toteutettiin tutustumalla aiheeseen liittyvään kirjallisuuteen sekä kehittäjäyhteisön web-sivustojen tietoon. Hyvän tekoälyn kriteereiksi valikoituivat viihdyttävyys ja uskottavuus. Katsaus suosituimpiin toteuttamistekniikoihin ja tekoälyn mahdollisuuksiin osoitti, että teoriassa hyvinkin edistynyt tekoäly on toteutettavissa. Käytännössä tietokoneen rajalliset resurssit, kehittäjien rajalliset taidot ja pelinkehitysprojektien asettamat vaatimukset näyttävät kuitenkin rajoittavan tekoälyn toteuttamista kaupallisessa tuotteessa.